Jessie Tarbox Beals (December 23, 1870 – May 30, 1942) was an American photographer, the first published female
photojournalist in the United States and the first female
night photographer.
She is best known for her freelance news photographs, particularly of the 1904
St. Louis World's Fair, and portraits of places such as
Bohemian
Bohemian or Bohemians may refer to:
*Anything of or relating to Bohemia
Beer
* National Bohemian, a brand brewed by Pabst
* Bohemian, a brand of beer brewed by Molson Coors
Culture and arts
* Bohemianism, an unconventional lifestyle, origin ...
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
.
Her trademarks were her self-described "ability to hustle" and her tenacity in overcoming gender barriers in her profession.
Early life and education
Beals was born Jessie Richmond Tarbox on December 23, 1870, in
Hamilton Hamilton may refer to:
People
* Hamilton (name), a common British surname and occasional given name, usually of Scottish origin, including a list of persons with the surname
** The Duke of Hamilton, the premier peer of Scotland
** Lord Hamilt ...
, Ontario, the youngest child of John Nathaniel Tarbox and Marie Antoinette Bassett. John Tarbox was a sewing machine manufacturer, and his partnership with the largest sewing machine company in Canada made the Tarbox family wealthy. When Beals was seven, however, her father lost all of his savings in a bad investment and began drinking heavily. He eventually left home at the insistence of Beals's mother, who then embroidered and sold some of the family's belongings to keep the family income going.
Beals was a "bright and precocious child" and did well in school.
At age fourteen she was admitted to the Collegiate Institute of Ontario, and at seventeen received her teaching certificate. Beals began teaching at a one-room schoolhouse in
Williamsburg, Massachusetts
Williamsburg is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 2,504 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area.
History
The area was first settled in 1735 and ...
, where her brother Paul was also living at the time. In 1888,
Beals won a subscription prize camera through the
''Youth's Companion'' magazine.
[New York Times (May 31, 1942]
“JESSIE BEALS DIES; Photographer, 71. 1942.”
''The New York Times'' (accessed January 10, 2013) The camera was small and somewhat rudimentary, but Beals began to use it to take photographs of her students and their surroundings. Beals soon bought a higher quality Kodak camera and set up Williamsburg's first photography studio in front of her house, although photography largely remained her side hobby.
Photography career
In 1893 Beals took a new teaching position in
Greenfield, Massachusetts and visited the
World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...
in Chicago. At the Exposition, Beals' interest in traveling and photography was sparked having met
Frances Benjamin Johnston
Frances Benjamin Johnston (January 15, 1864 – May 16, 1952) was an early American photographer and photojournalist whose career lasted for almost half a century. She is most known for her portraits, images of southern architecture, and various ...
and
Gertrude Käsebier.
In 1897, Beals married Alfred Tennyson Beals, an Amherst graduate and factory machinist.
In 1899, Beals received her first professional assignment when she was asked by
''The'' ''Boston Post'' to photograph the Massachusetts state prison. Beals taught Alfred the basics of photography and the couple set out to work as itinerant photographers in 1900, with Alfred as Beals's darkroom assistant. That year, Beals also received her first credit line for her photographs in a publication, the ''Windham County Reformer''.
By 1901, the Beals' funds were depleted and they resettled in
Buffalo, New York. Later that year, Beals was hired as a staff photographer by the ''Buffalo Inquirer'' and ''
The Buffalo Courier'',
after impressing the editor with a photograph of ducks waddling in a row entitled "On to Albany." This position made her the first female
photojournalist and was well-regarded by the papers and citizens of Buffalo and worked at the publications until 1904 when she left to take photos of the World's Fair.
Photojournalism was physically demanding, often risky work, but Beals could be seen carrying out assignments in her ankle-length dresses and large hats, with her 8-by-10-inch glass plate camera and 50 pounds of equipment in tow. During one assignment for the lurid murder trial of Edwin L. Burdick in Buffalo, Beals broke a rule that forbade photographs of the trial by climbing a tall bookcase to a window to snap a picture of the courtroom before she was detected.
In 1904, Beals was sent to the opening of the
Louisiana Purchase Exposition in
St. Louis
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
,
Missouri
Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...
. There, Beals persuaded officials to give her a late press permit for the pre-exposition, climbed ladders and jumped into a hot air balloon just to get photographs that interested her. She was greatly interested in the
Indigenous
Indigenous may refer to:
*Indigenous peoples
*Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention
*Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band
*Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...
peoples which resulted in capturing many spontaneous images that didn't necessarily fit into the predominant narrative of racial and developmental progress. She had a different style than most news photographers of the day, focusing on series of pictures that would later be used to write stories, rather than vice versa. Beals's display of her signature "hustle" earned her the position of official Fair photographer for the ''
New York Herald'', ''
Leslie's Weekly
''Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper'', later renamed ''Leslie's Weekly'', was an American illustrated literary and news magazine founded in 1855 and published until 1922. It was one of several magazines started by publisher and illustrator Frank ...
'' and the ''
Tribune
Tribune () was the title of various elected officials in ancient Rome. The two most important were the tribunes of the plebs and the military tribunes. For most of Roman history, a college of ten tribunes of the plebs acted as a check on th ...
'', as well as the Fair's publicity department, producing over 3,500 photographs and 45,000 prints of the event.
In addition to photographing the various exhibits at the Fair, Beals also captured a candid photograph of President
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
. This initial encounter earned her a special pass to photograph Roosevelt and the
Rough Riders
The Rough Riders was a nickname given to the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, one of three such regiments raised in 1898 for the Spanish–American War and the only one to see combat. The United States Army was small, understaffed, and di ...
at their reunion in
San Antonio
("Cradle of Freedom")
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, map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = United States
, subdivision_type1= State
, subdivision_name1 = Texas
, subdivision_t ...
, Texas in 1905.
A studio on Sixth Avenue
In 1905 Beals opened her own studio on
Sixth Avenue in New York City. Beals continued to take on a variety of photograph assignments, ranging from shots of auto races and portraits of society figures, to her well-known photographs of Bohemian
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
and the New York
slums. Over the years Beals also photographed several presidents and celebrities, including presidents
Coolidge,
Hoover and
Taft;
Mark Twain;
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright. Millay was a renowned social figure and noted feminist in New York City during the Roaring Twenties and beyond. She wrote much of he ...
; and
Emily Post.
While Beals' career flourished, her marriage became troubled. In 1911, Beals gave birth to a daughter, Nanette Tarbox Beals, most likely from another relationship. Beals finally left her husband in 1917.
A studio and a gallery in Greenwich Village
She moved to Greenwich Village and opened a new photography studio and gallery in 1920. For a few years, Beals juggled working and caring for Nanette, who also suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and was frequently hospitalized, eventually deciding to send Nanette to camps and private boarding schools throughout the year. Nanette would later go on to live semi-permanently with one of Beals' old friends.
Later years
As the number of female photographers increased during the 1920s, Beals shifted her focus to giving public talks and specializing in photographing suburban gardens and estates of wealthy East Coasters.
By 1928, she and Nanette moved to California, where Beals photographed Hollywood estates. The
Great Depression brought Beals and Nanette back to New York in 1933, where Beals lived and worked in Greenwich Village.
Beals gradually fell into poverty, years of lavish living and the effects of the Depression having taken their toll. She died on May 30, 1942, at
Bellevue Hospital
Bellevue Hospital (officially NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue and formerly known as Bellevue Hospital Center) is a hospital in New York City and the oldest public hospital in the United States. One of the largest hospitals in the United States ...
, at the age of seventy-one.
Her photographs and prints are in collections at the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...
,
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
, the
New-York Historical Society
The New-York Historical Society is an American history museum and library in New York City, along Central Park West between 76th and 77th Streets, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The society was founded in 1804 as New York's first museum ...
, and the
American Museum of Natural History.
In 1982, the
Schlesinger Library
The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America is a research library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. According to Nancy F. Cott, the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director ...
at Radcliffe received Beals' papers and pictures from her daughter, Nanette Beals Brainerd.
Notes
Further reading
*
* Breitbart, Eric. ''A World on Display: Photographs from the St. Louis World's Fair''. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1997
External links
*
Papers of Jessie Tarbox Beals, 1866–1989 (inclusive), 1880–1942 (bulk).Schlesinger Library
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
Photographs, 1896–1941, n.d..Schlesinger Library
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
Guide to the Jessie Tarbox Beals Photograph Collection 1900–1940
* ttp://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/newsplus/first-behind-the-camera-photojournalist-jessie-tarbox-beals/ First behind the camera: Photojournalist Jessie Tarbox Bealsbr>The Jessie Tarbox Beals Photograph Collection
at the New-York Historical Society
Snapshot album of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, 1904, Saint Louis, Mo
by Jessie Tarbox Beals, Getty Research Institute
Jessie Tarbox Beals Photographs : Louisiana Purchase Exhibition
a
St. Louis Public Library
Encyclopædia Britannica
Jessie Tarbox Beals Photographs Finding Aid
at th
St. Louis Public Library
Jessie Tarbox Beals photographs, online via the Library of Congress
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beals, Jessie Tarbox
American photojournalists
American women journalists
1870 births
1942 deaths
Canadian emigrants to the United States
19th-century American photographers
20th-century American photographers
19th-century American women photographers
20th-century American women photographers
Women photojournalists